Game details

Can Uncharted really be Uncharted without Nathan Drake? For nearly a decade now, the cinematic action-adventure series has been as tightly linked to its main character as the Indiana Jones movies are to, well, Indiana Jones. Spinning off Lost Legacy as a Nathan Drake-free Uncharted experiment—just a year after the last major franchise release and at a cut-rate price point—is a move that smacks of being a desperate effort to squeeze the last drops out of a series that has lost its main protagonist.

So it's nice to say that, on the one hand, Lost Legacy shows that Uncharted is definitely still Uncharted without Nathan Drake. On the other hand, it also shows that Uncharted is still just Uncharted, Nathan Drake or no.

A not-so-dynamic duo

Further Reading

With Nathan out of the picture, Lost Legacy draws from some of the series' secondary characters, focusing on the player-controlled Chloe Frazer and AI assistant Nadine Ross (plus the surprise appearance of another familiar face that I've been asked not to spoil). I hope you recognize these characters from their previous Uncharted adventures, because Lost Legacy seems to assume quite often that you know them and their history with the series. If you don't, there are only mild allusions to explain how they got here and why you should care about their adventures.

The treasure-hunting Chloe and the more mercenary Nadine make for an odd pairing, which the game makes a valiant effort to explain through a lot of retrospective exposition about how they met up and why they're working together. There's something of a token effort to link the protagonists through a shared sense of loss—Chloe for her father, Nadine for her mercenary group—but it never feels very natural, and the unlikely team-up never quite gels.

I'm impressed.

The now-required crowd scene starts things off.

Uh, that doesn't look good.

Yeah, come meet me, I'm just hanging out by the mobile phone store.

This jeep is incredibly durable.

Simply taking in the views is the best part of the game.

I mean just look at that sunset. Worth the price of admission on its own, practically.

Even the platforming puzzles are beautiful!

Oh come on, you can't see her? She's right there?!

Worth the climb.

If you're into Hindu religious symbols, you'll be into Lost Legacy.

Some amazing water effects fill the latter half of the game.

Chloe and Nadine go through a lot of emotional dips and peaks as their stressful adventure puts multiple strains on their partnership, acting like old pals and blood rivals at turns. But none of these emotional beats feels especially earned. Instead, the game ends up with a lot of actions that seem to make sense more for narrative convenience than for the purposes of believable character and relationship building.

That doesn't mean there aren't some thoroughly enjoyable exchanges between the pair, including a few Nathan Drake-style one-liners that made me chuckle out loud. And as usual for the series, the superb voice acting and motion capture help elevate the written material to a level above many games without the same production values. On the whole, though, I never really bought in to the new dynamic adventuring duo that Lost Legacy was trying so hard to sell.

Villains that chew the beautiful scenery

It doesn't help that the treasure-hunting adventure Chloe and Nadine are tasked with is one of the weakest of the series, plot wise. In a lightly fictionalized and heavily stratified India on the brink of a civil war, our heroines are seeking Ganesha's Tusk, a relic with huge religious and semi-mythological significance to the country's Hindu population. In their way is Asav, a bloodthirsty and maniacal mercenary leader who thinks the tusk will unite people behind his royalist bloodline.

Even by the low standards of Uncharted antagonists, Asav is a snarling and scenery-chewing villain, monologuing ridiculous rants through multiple opportunities to easily kill his foes. With plans and motivations that seem to shift with the wind, Asav doesn't even provide a good foil for Chloe and Nadine to bounce good lines off—nor a convincing threat to the pair's well-being.

The Indian setting, though, provides a good excuse to craft a tight mythology around stories surrounding a few Hindu gods and the ancient societies that were trying to protect those gods' secrets with cities hidden deep in forested mountains. This, in turn, provides an excuse for Naughty Dog to craft some of the best architecture and scenery in a series already brimming with quality examples of each.

Every few minutes it seems there's a new breathtaking vista to take in or a beautiful giant statue of a Hindu god or mythological king. Then there's the usual intricate, ancient stone-and-crank technology that makes the ruins come to life, which is as impressive (and unlikely) as ever. Even the simple platforming and block-pushing puzzles are enjoyable-enough opportunities to just revel in the graphical splendor of your surroundings. For pure digital sightseeing, Lost Legacy is at the top of its game, especially if you can give the graphics an HDR boost through the PS4 Pro.

The play’s the thing

I've gotten this far in the review without talking about the actual gameplay in Lost Legacy because there's really not much new or interesting to say about it. The game plays so similarly to last year's Uncharted 4 that it might as well be a DLC pack rather than a standalone release.

The majority of play time is still taken up by wandering the beautiful jungle ruins, searching for a path of overhangs to jump and climb with your preternaturally strong fingers and upper arms. These lengthy sections provide a good, low-stress excuse to get lost in the game's wonderful locales, including an extended section where you can drive around relatively freely using a map to search for points of interest.

It's easy to get turned around or struggle to find your way in the over-detailed environments, and there were plenty of times where seemingly safe jumps ended in unexpected death. Still, the game provides a decent, subtle hint system to help push you forward if you get stuck for too long, and the beautifully smooth animation makes the climbing sections low-impact fun.

The climbing bits are interspersed as usual with somewhat-forced encounters with armed bad guys, though these seem blessedly less frequent and onerous than they have been in recent Uncharted games. Unfortunately, the enemy AI remains relatively brain-dead (at least on Normal difficulty), making it relatively easy to sneak up on countless enemies and take them out with a one-button stealth takedown. It's almost implausible how easy it is to evade their detection; even as you leave countless corpses in your wake, the guards will only seem mildly and temporarily worried rather than conduct a full-out panicked search.

If you're found, the enemies will often charge blindly at you or stand uncovered out in the open, just asking to be shot. A very generous health regeneration system means it's also relatively easy to dash out, kill a few bad guys while absorbing bullets, then dash behind some convenient cover and be good as new within seconds.

Add in some extremely simplistic two-button melee combat and enemy variety that's divided into three extremely basic types (armored, unarmored, and sniper), and you get combat that feels like a repetitive chore more than a really engaging firefight most of the time.

All told, Uncharted Lost Legacy is an incredibly by-the-book affair. Everything from the crowd scenes to the car chases to the "surprise" moments when a handhold gives way to the "thrilling" time-sensitive escapes from crumbling ruins feels like ground that has been well-trodden by ten years of these games. Lost Legacy most often feels like it's just going through the motions and checking off the Uncharted checkboxes without much passion or inventiveness, at this point.

As a debatable plus side, Lost Legacy doesn't overstay its welcome. I managed to reach the credits in well under seven hours of play time, and even a 100-percent completionist run would probably only add a couple more hours to that total. This leaves little time for character relationships and plot threads to play out without feeling clipped. It also kind of adds to the feeling that this $40 adventure would have worked just as well as a couple of episodes of Uncharted 4 DLC, rather than being awkwardly packaged into a relatively sparse full game (Update: The original version of this story misstated the price. Ars regrets the error).

If you're looking for more Uncharted, then Lost Legacy will definitely provide it. If you're looking for more from theUnchartedseries, though, you'll be pretty underwhelmed.

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Kyle Orland
Kyle is the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica, specializing in video game hardware and software. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He is based in the Washington, DC area. Emailkyle.orland@arstechnica.com//Twitter@KyleOrl

28 Reader Comments

Sheesh, it sounds like the gun fights (in both control and AI) are still lacking. You'd think after 4 games (and now this 5th one), they'd have fixed that. The gun battles were always a boring chore, and the hand-to-hand bits awkward as hell. The rest of the game worked well, but the combat was just - ick. I don't think I'm willing to put up with that for two new characters that seem wholly generic and have no real chemistry. Naughty Dog really need to work on better puzzles, better controls, more solid AI, and entertaining gunfights for the next one. Big QTE heavy cinematic events only entertain for so long. I hope this one doesn't end up going to pot like the Tomb Raider series did for so long (prior to the reboot of Tomb Raider and then its sequel Rise of the Tomb Raider) due to an unwillingness to update the game mechanics and improve things.

I'll just go replay Rise of the Tomb Raider. A game that brought Tomb Raider back from the dead and did everything right, even surpassing the solid Tomb Raider reboot. Solid puzzles, solid combat, great characterization, actual tomb raiding, and still some of the best graphics out there if your PC can handle it (looks great on the consoles, too).

I don't think you could really expect a whole lot to change. When they tried that (Uncharted 3) they were chided and Uncharted 2 still sits as the best in the series for many despite the fact that Uncharted 3 had more gameplay diversity than 2. Uncharted 2 was more visual spectacle, so I guess you could say it looked more exciting to play.

Uncharted always stood out for its great graphics and great script. Gunplay was always just serviceable. Not bad, but not amazing. It just worked really well. It got boring because of how often you were doing it, like Gears of War.

Even though I really enjoyed Uncharted 4, the game felt too long because the gunplay didn't change much from the previous games. Big, bombastic gameplay can only a carry a game for so long. I was getting bored with the combat and just wanted to see more of the story after 10 hours.

It sounds like maybe they built some of this content for the last release of Uncharted, and it never quite fit. So they had a framework, some levels and characters lying on the cutting room floor, so they decided to make a game out of it. That would explain the poor character motivations, and the low price point.. It would be interesting if Ars could get some background from people involved in the development process..

Think of it like how Left Behind was made. That was likely not a primary team working on that one. Personally, I wanted Naughty Dog to have separate teams working on different things. It takes them long enough to make one game.

For me after Uncharted 3 there was a genre change. Don't get me wrong, Uncharted 4 is a fantastic game, but it lost something. The never-ending cut scenes, the forced stealth, the less-than-smooth climbing controls.

Before it, you could play careful or go guns blazing, it was your choice, playing them all back to back from one to three feels the same, but the fourth one has a "last of us" forced feeling to it that doesn't quite click.

This last chapter sounds a lot more like a leftover from Uncharted 4 than a proper member of the series.

"Spinning off Lost Legacy as a Nathan Drake-free Uncharted experiment—just a year after the last major franchise release and at a cut-rate price point—is a move that smacks of being a desperate effort to squeeze the last drops out of a series that has lost its main protagonist."

"It also kind of adds to the feeling that this $25 adventure would have worked just as well as a couple of episodes of Uncharted 4 DLC, rather than being awkwardly packaged into a relatively sparse full game."

Does Kyle know this was announced as DLC and then they decided to also release it standalone later on? And that the people who preordered the DLC are still getting this? It is literally Uncharted 4 DLC that you also happen to be able to buy on its own, if you want. It is not a failed abortive Uncharted 5 or something.

Think of it like how Left Behind was made. That was likely not a primary team working on that one. Personally, I wanted Naughty Dog to have separate teams working on different things. It takes them long enough to make one game.

The long time spans between singular releases has me assuming that, while there may be more than one dev team, there are a lot of shared resources. Specifically Neil Druckman as the principal writer/director/driving-force.

I don't think you could really expect a whole lot to change. When they tried that (Uncharted 3) they were chided and Uncharted 2 still sits as the best in the series for many despite the fact that Uncharted 3 had more gameplay diversity than 2. Uncharted 2 was more visual spectacle, so I guess you could say it looked more exciting to play.

Uncharted always stood out for its great graphics and great script. Gunplay was always just serviceable. Not bad, but not amazing. It just worked really well. It got boring because of how often you were doing it, like Gears of War.

Even though I really enjoyed Uncharted 4, the game felt too long because the gunplay didn't change much from the previous games. Big, bombastic gameplay can only a carry a game for so long. I was getting bored with the combat and just wanted to see more of the story after 10 hours.

I played the Uncharted games in the wrong order (started with 4 and then played through 1-3), and Uncharted 2 is easily the weakest. The plot is ridiculous, the platforming is vestigial, and there's way, way too much combat. 3, and especially 4, were far more fun gameplay-wise.

Still, the series' easy charm is a massive step up from the po-faced nonsense of the Tomb Raider reboots, and More Uncharted (4) is exactly what I want.

"Spinning off Lost Legacy as a Nathan Drake-free Uncharted experiment—just a year after the last major franchise release and at a cut-rate price point—is a move that smacks of being a desperate effort to squeeze the last drops out of a series that has lost its main protagonist."

"It also kind of adds to the feeling that this $25 adventure would have worked just as well as a couple of episodes of Uncharted 4 DLC, rather than being awkwardly packaged into a relatively sparse full game."

Does Kyle know this was announced as DLC and then they decided to also release it standalone later on? And that the people who preordered the DLC are still getting this? It is literally Uncharted 4 DLC that you also happen to be able to buy on its own, if you want. It is not a failed abortive Uncharted 5 or something.

I was going to say exactly this - it has been widely known for a while now that it is a standalone game based on a DLC, and for those with the season pass are basically getting (nearly) a whole game. Every other review on the internet mentions this. Why doesn't Kyle know?

Also, calling out an UC game for poor and boring gunplay ("repetitive chore") is missing the point: those are gameplay 'filler' for what the series does best: adventuring, puzzle-solving, and treasure-hunting.

For me after Uncharted 3 there was a genre change. Don't get me wrong, Uncharted 4 is a fantastic game, but it lost something. The never-ending cut scenes, the forced stealth, the less-than-smooth climbing controls.

Before it, you could play careful or go guns blazing, it was your choice, playing them all back to back from one to three feels the same, but the fourth one has a "last of us" forced feeling to it that doesn't quite click.

This last chapter sounds a lot more like a leftover from Uncharted 4 than a proper member of the series.

UC4 has *more* options for stealth than any of the previous games, including the ability to 'tag' enemies, avoid them, take them on one by one, etc. Also the climbing and the maneuvering while still being able to shoot - the mechanics are improved from previous instances. UC4 seemed to be more precision-honed as entertainment, with better gameplay mechanics all around compared to its predecessors.

Wait, hang on, we're giving Uncharted shit about its gunplay? The game where I can jump off a cliff, toss a rope to swing around a tower while tossing a grenade into a window, then headshot a guy while flying through the air only to land and knock a guy out with a punch combo?

THIS is what we have a problem with?

More of the same of Uncharted 4 is welcome. The only problem with that game was despite it being lengthy and plentiful, there still wasn't enough of it.

Everyone's entitled to their opinion, but this review feels like a swing and a miss on the point of what makes Uncharted great.

I was going to give this one a rest. But other reviews have been far more positive than Kyle's.

My kids love watching me play Uncharted more than any other game, probably because of the adventuring, the puzzle-solving, the quite spectacular scenery and settings etc. Having played each of the games twice already (UC2 was literally the first game I bought for my PS3), a couple of months ago I bought the UC Collection (1, 2, & 3) at the insistence of the kids, and played through them one after the other. A *lot* of repetitive gunplay, but it's interesting to see the development of the series in terms of gameplay, and in this respect UC4 is far more refined in terms of character control, gameplay mechanics, but also the mixture of cutscene/puzzle sequence/ gunplay or stealth sequence, etc., as it should be.

UC:LL is not only a chance to spend more time doing that, but with two 'nontraditional' (read: nonwhite, non-male) protagonists to boot. What's not to like?

I was going to give this one a rest. But other reviews have been far more positive than Kyle's.

My kids love watching me play Uncharted more than any other game, probably because of the adventuring, the puzzle-solving, the quite spectacular scenery and settings etc. Having played each of the games twice already (UC2 was literally the first game I bought for my PS3), a couple of months ago I bought the UC Collection (1, 2, & 3) at the insistence of the kids, and played through them one after the other. A *lot* of repetitive gunplay, but it's interesting to see the development of the series in terms of gameplay, and in this respect UC4 is far more refined in terms of character control, gameplay mechanics, but also the mixture of cutscene/puzzle sequence/ gunplay or stealth sequence, etc., as it should be.

UC:LL is not only a chance to spend more time doing that, but with two 'nontraditional' (read: nonwhite, non-male) protagonists to boot. What's not to like?

"Spinning off Lost Legacy as a Nathan Drake-free Uncharted experiment—just a year after the last major franchise release and at a cut-rate price point—is a move that smacks of being a desperate effort to squeeze the last drops out of a series that has lost its main protagonist."

"It also kind of adds to the feeling that this $25 adventure would have worked just as well as a couple of episodes of Uncharted 4 DLC, rather than being awkwardly packaged into a relatively sparse full game."

Does Kyle know this was announced as DLC and then they decided to also release it standalone later on? And that the people who preordered the DLC are still getting this? It is literally Uncharted 4 DLC that you also happen to be able to buy on its own, if you want. It is not a failed abortive Uncharted 5 or something.

I was going to say exactly this - it has been widely known for a while now that it is a standalone game based on a DLC, and for those with the season pass are basically getting (nearly) a whole game. Every other review on the internet mentions this. Why doesn't Kyle know?

Also, calling out an UC game for poor and boring gunplay ("repetitive chore") is missing the point: those are gameplay 'filler' for what the series does best: adventuring, puzzle-solving, and treasure-hunting.

I was going to give this one a rest. But other reviews have been far more positive than Kyle's.

My kids love watching me play Uncharted more than any other game, probably because of the adventuring, the puzzle-solving, the quite spectacular scenery and settings etc. Having played each of the games twice already (UC2 was literally the first game I bought for my PS3), a couple of months ago I bought the UC Collection (1, 2, & 3) at the insistence of the kids, and played through them one after the other. A *lot* of repetitive gunplay, but it's interesting to see the development of the series in terms of gameplay, and in this respect UC4 is far more refined in terms of character control, gameplay mechanics, but also the mixture of cutscene/puzzle sequence/ gunplay or stealth sequence, etc., as it should be.

UC:LL is not only a chance to spend more time doing that, but with two 'nontraditional' (read: nonwhite, non-male) protagonists to boot. What's not to like?

Actually, the reviews are all over the place - ex: GS 9.0, IGN 7.5

Is that really all over the place? I know review scores are stuffed these days, but when the lowest score on metacritic is 70 and the highest is 100, with an average after 55 reviews of 85, I'd say that is pretty consistent.

The Uncharted series is a guilty pleasure of mine, I've enjoyed them all despite a part of my brain telling me I shouldn't because they're essentially everything wrong with modern video games. But there's something about Naughty Dog's level of care and polish that cancels out those negative thoughts.

Always loved Claudia Black so I'm pretty hyped for her as the main character.

For me after Uncharted 3 there was a genre change. Don't get me wrong, Uncharted 4 is a fantastic game, but it lost something. The never-ending cut scenes, the forced stealth, the less-than-smooth climbing controls.

Before it, you could play careful or go guns blazing, it was your choice, playing them all back to back from one to three feels the same, but the fourth one has a "last of us" forced feeling to it that doesn't quite click.

This last chapter sounds a lot more like a leftover from Uncharted 4 than a proper member of the series.

UC4 has *more* options for stealth than any of the previous games, including the ability to 'tag' enemies, avoid them, take them on one by one, etc. Also the climbing and the maneuvering while still being able to shoot - the mechanics are improved from previous instances. UC4 seemed to be more precision-honed as entertainment, with better gameplay mechanics all around compared to its predecessors.

That's a genre change for me. Uncharted was never about stealth. UC4 shoves it down your throat and forces you through it. For me it was climbing, puzzles and over-the-top gun fights. It felt too much like "The Last of Us" which for me has a completely different mood.

For me after Uncharted 3 there was a genre change. Don't get me wrong, Uncharted 4 is a fantastic game, but it lost something. The never-ending cut scenes, the forced stealth, the less-than-smooth climbing controls.

Before it, you could play careful or go guns blazing, it was your choice, playing them all back to back from one to three feels the same, but the fourth one has a "last of us" forced feeling to it that doesn't quite click.

This last chapter sounds a lot more like a leftover from Uncharted 4 than a proper member of the series.

UC4 has *more* options for stealth than any of the previous games, including the ability to 'tag' enemies, avoid them, take them on one by one, etc. Also the climbing and the maneuvering while still being able to shoot - the mechanics are improved from previous instances. UC4 seemed to be more precision-honed as entertainment, with better gameplay mechanics all around compared to its predecessors.

That's a genre change for me. Uncharted was never about stealth. UC4 shoves it down your throat and forces you through it. For me it was climbing, puzzles and over-the-top gun fights. It felt too much like "The Last of Us" which for me has a completely different mood.

That's completely false, Uncharted 4 never forces you into stealth, just gives you more opportunities for them, and stealth elements have existed in Uncharted since 2. Apart from a few exceptions (if any? can't remember) you can always ignore them and go guns blazing immediately, if you don't feel like it.